


Hostile Little Flirtations

by ashesandhoney



Category: Red White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, POV Henry, who knows which henry AO3 has that saved for but i'm using it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:34:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22843360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashesandhoney/pseuds/ashesandhoney
Summary: A bit of Henry POV set after carefully planned bromance weekend.
Relationships: Alex Claremont-Diaz/Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor
Comments: 22
Kudos: 228





	Hostile Little Flirtations

"How did the weekend with the little American Dickhead go?" Pez asked. 

"Fine." 

"Is not an answer."

"I don't know." 

"Also not an answer." 

Henry rolled his eyes and Pez shrugged back. 

He genuinely did not have an answer for how it went. Alex had been his usual dickhead self. All charm and smiles for the cameras and all jabs and insults for anyone without a press badge. Then they'd had their little wrestling match on the floor of the damned supply closet and Alex had been right in his personal space all while complaining and throwing elbows and generally acting like a child. 

Not a child.

A dickhead. 

A hostile brilliant idiot who smelled good and had near perfect eyelashes and a blinding smile. 

The little American Dickhead wasn't such a hardship to look at but he was whiny and sarcastic and self centered enough to believe it was all about him. Alex had believed that Henry's mood at the Olympics had something to do with him. Anything to do with him. It had been the first big press even that Henry had been expected to do after his father's death. One of the first he'd been expected to handle alone. As an adult. At eighteen. Training be damned, fourteen months of 'recovering' be damned. All of it be damned. 

Rio had been the worst sort of hell with too many video cameras. 

Flirty drunk American boys had been the last thing he needed in Rio. Henry wasn't allowed to be drunk at the diving finals. He wasn't allowed to flirt with cute dignitaries. He'd have to say something to the press after it was over about Britain's showing. He'd have to brace himself and take any questions about his father's death or the grief or his sister falling apart in public with grace and all the right talking points. He hadn't wanted to make nice with a cute drunk American who was just there to smile and have a good time. It wasn't fair. Seventeen was too young to realize just how unfair life was. Death and politics and press cameras. 

He'd told Shaan to get rid of him because he couldn't get rid of the rest of it. 

Alex had heard the tiniest tips of that iceberg and built up an entire feud in his head over those words. 

"And you're you," Alex had said something like that in that mess of wrestling and sniping and arguments about Star Wars and that thing he'd done with his goddamn hips. At some point in all that, Alex had said something about how Henry was the perfect paragon that he was always going to be compared too and be seen as less than. 

Henry had lain on his back in the supply closet of a hospital with his forehead aching from bang it against a fucking bedpan and finally understood a little bit of the charm offensive and Alex's big bright smile. The drawling accent that he put on a little harder when he was trying to make someone like him. The attention seeking in the press. The rumours and the flirting and the famous friends. He was trying so damn hard with that smile. 

How had the weekend gone? Not the way Henry had expected. 

"The pictures and the papers are doing their job," was all his said 

"An answer but not to what I asked."

Henry swung his feet up to drape them over Pez's lap. Pez just lifted his hands out of the way and then went back to whatever he was doing on his phone as Henry settled in. He didn't answer yet, just stared at the ceiling and rubbed the bridge of his nose. 

"That bad? At least it's over. The state dinner thing is months away and it's a state dinner not a date." 

Henry groaned. 

"Explain?"

"It's an on-going thing though, isn't it? It isn't one weekend and a dinner. It's a new show to put on for everyone for the rest of time." 

"At least this show's costar is cute." 

"Fuck off." 

"Is he that cute up close? Without the stage lights and the photoshop? Is his sister?"

Henry made a grumpy sound. The kind of sound he wouldn't make in front of anyone else except maybe Bea.

"Is that a yes?"

"No." 

"No?"

"Yes," Henry said but he wasn't sure what he was talking about any more. 

"Hmm. And June?"

"Not my department."

"Don't be a git."

Henry deadpanned without opening his eyes, "She's very pretty, you have excellent taste." 

"Mocking me now?"

"Yesterday, now, tomorrow, that time when we were studying for A Levels, forever." 

Pez laughed and they fell silent for a little while. Henry opened his phone and scrolled around on the gossip sites. The papers really were doing an excellent job of making it all look very friendly and civil. Alex had helped. Alex was good at press. Better than the last international relations friendship Henry had been bullied into striking up with a German politician's son who was fine in person but always came across a bit cardboard on screen. Henry was polite and reserved as fit his standing. That guy had just been cardboard. They still did the occasional photo op and he hadn't gotten any better since he was fifteen. A cardboard friend. Alex was not cardboard. Alex was the opposite of cardboard. 

"He gave me his number," Henry finally admitted into the comfortable silence. 

"Like gave you his number, gave you his number?"

"Not a business card." 

Pez was finally paying full attention to the conversation. "So, he is flirting? I told you that he was flirting. He was definitely flirting at that thing in New York last year. And look at this picture, that's flirty." 

The picture was a still from the morning show with Alex positively hanging off of Henry's shoulder. 

"I don't think he was flirting," Henry started. "Flirting at a public appearance like that would be...." 

He trailed off. Pez picked up the thought for him. 

"Would be a terrible idea for you but Mr. American Liberalism? Best buddies with the gay MP, senator, representative, whatever the fuck they call them over there. That guy? Could probably make the cover of every major paper, be the grand marshal at a pride parade and throw a coming out party at the White House and still launch his own political career in the next ten years. His grandmother probably wouldn't have him drawn and quartered and then put his head up on a pike in front of the palace."

Henry snorted out a laugh. It was his own joke back from the William Debacle days when he was nineteen and facing down the possibility of a leak big enough to sink a ship. His grandmother would probably not have him publicly executed but only because it would lead to bad press. He rubbed his face to clear those memories away. Pez slapped his knee and showed him another picture from the little press tour. 

"He definitely looks like he's flirting. I don't smile like that at people I'm not flirting with," Pez said. 

"I think he was telling me to fuck off as that photo was taken." 

"That's not not-flirty," Pez told him. "He did give you his private number. Dieter never gave you his private number."

Henry swore. "I don't want Dieter's private number."

Pez popped up, swiveled in his seat, pushing Henry's knees off his lap and tilting his head. Considering. Henry glared. The memory of Alex under him in the supply closet bucking his hips up and squirming was suddenly front and center in his mind. Not not-flirting. Definitely not not-flirting. Pez was looking at him like he could read his thoughts. Maybe Pez could read his thoughts. Pez was the one had sat through the great William Debacle in his first year poetry course. 

"So do you want the little American Dickhead's number?"

"No." 

"No? Did you delete it?"

"No."

"For public relations reasons?" 

"I haven't decided yet." 

"Uh huh," Pez said. "Text him. Text him now. Something low key. Funny. Not like trying too hard flirty funny. Just funny. Call him the Little American Dickhead and see how he takes it." 

"No."

The Little American Dickhead was not worth it. Eyelashes and the little tilted head smile when he'd said, "No booty calls," be damned. So it was definitely not not-flirting. It wasn't categorically not flirting but Henry wasn't about to stake the potential public relations nightmare of getting caught flirting with the son of a head of state on that. 

No. 

The number could just sit. It could wait. Henry wouldn't indulge in that kind of mess. Alex could afford to not quite flirt with anyone he damn well pleased but Henry didn't have that luxury. He couldn't afford to get caught at it. His close calls with boyfriends from uni or guys at parties who might not have realized who he was were bad enough. Getting caught with someone as high profile as Alex Claremont Diaz was a very bad idea. Eye lashes and those hips and that smile and the hostile flirtation aside, it was a very very bad idea. 

It was playing with fire.

He would let the number just sit. It could sit there in the contacts list that he never opened and just gather dust. It was fine. 

The problem, it turned out, was that a spark caught your attention over and over again. An ember in your pocket was an invitation to play with fire. Just a little fire. He saw Alex on an internet talk show. Buzzfeed or one of the ones that was like Buzzfeed and he was answering questions and flirting with the camera and the urge to open his phone and send something was too much to resist.

Nothing too much. Not quite flirting. Not not-flirting but not flirting. Henry could play Alex's game. He sent a text message that didn't quite call him the Little American Dickhead but if a picture says a thousand words, at least three of them were Little American Dickhead. A Star Wars joke. That was safe. Silly. Plausible deniability if Philip were to read the message over his shoulder. Harmless fun with a cute guy who was definitely the one who started it. 

Hostile little flirtations. 

Nothing more than that. 

**Author's Note:**

> I knew that book was m/m going in so I assumed Alex was bi from the start and his sexual identity crisis took me a little by surprise (I loved that part of the book from a meta standpoint but I was still like, oh, whoops) so I'm assuming he reads that way to other characters in world. Nora isn't exactly shocked when he comes out to her and neither is his mother. 
> 
> No one is surprised that Alex isn't straight except for Alex. Henry is no exception.
> 
> Henry definitely notices Alex is somewhere off straight long before Alex does. 
> 
> So I really interpreted everything up to the "You are so thick" line and the kiss as Henry thinking they were flirting cautiously but mutually. This was me working through some of those ideas. 
> 
> I might do another chapter focusing on "selfies from bed" to build up to the New Years Eve party.
> 
> Also please forgive me for how very very very not British I am. I am sure I have made mistakes. Please don't murder me British people. You'd have to fly out here to do it and that's a long ass expensive trip, not worth it.


End file.
